


your shaking shoulders (prove that it's colder inside your head)

by postfixrevolution



Series: for every i'm sorry that i know you won't believe [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emotional Conflict, F/M, Introspection, Post Conquest Chapter 13, Unresolved Emotional Tension, can be read as romantic or not, everyone is sad and nothing gets resolved, kind of, minimal plot spoilers, you know the one where you fight against Scarlet in Cheve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 07:52:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6795514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postfixrevolution/pseuds/postfixrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"One day, Kamui, you will die," he tells her quietly, "and it will be by my hands."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Then why not tonight?" she asks sadly, stilling her hands around his own. Takumi frowns, tightens his fingers around hers until his knuckles turn white, until they just barely match the pale shade of her own skin.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Because tonight," he whispers lowly, "Tonight I still love you, and it's only for that, that I won't let any more Hoshidan blood be spilled."</i>
</p><p>-</p><p>alternatively: a broken boy finds a girl with hair the color of nohrian winter and eyes the color of war just outside of enemy lines</p>
            </blockquote>





	your shaking shoulders (prove that it's colder inside your head)

**Author's Note:**

> Takumi/Kamui in Conquest is one of my favorite things ugh.
> 
> Bless my wonderful beta, [fledermauss](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fledermauss/pseuds/fledermauss); she has amazing FE:Awakening works, so go check her out! In the meantime, hope you enjoy this~
> 
> -
> 
>  
> 
> _Your shaking shoulders prove that it's colder_  
>  _inside your head than the winter of dead._  
>  _I will tell you, "I love you"_  
>  _but the muffs on your ears will cater your fears_  
>  **-["Oh, Miss Believer"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKU91Zjf2uQ) :: Twenty One Pilots**

The stars in Cheve look painfully like the ones that litter the sky above the Hoshidan capital: twinkling, distant, and half hidden by dishearteningly grey clouds. Takumi can’t sleep, even with the innumerable cuts that cover his skin, the unshakable fatigue that instills itself into his muscles and bones from the day’s battle. He wanders the the forest just outside of their camp like a listless ghost, his sun-stained skin painted silver under the pale moonlight. 

Defeat had been humiliating, made even more so by the saddened state of all his soldiers; few could still manage to fight if needed, but most were lucky to have enough energy to stand left in their battle-worn limbs. Kamui’s forces were relentless, yet Takumi can’t even find the conviction to label them as cruel. Blood had been splashed across the battleground, yet no bodies remained to render the dusty earth a graveyard for the fallen. Her magnanimity was so disgustingly  _ Kamui _ , and the thought of his humiliated soldiers, stripped of everything that made them fighters and left only as battle-worn men, made him sick. His once-sister may have won without taking a life, but she’d taken livelihoods with her, and for that, he knows he cannot forgive her.

Takumi huffs, exhaustion twisting the sound into something more akin to a sigh than anything else, and he leans against a tree, closes his eyes to the moonlight drenched forest around him. With the absence of sight, there is only the smell of pine and snow, more Nohrian than Hoshidan, and he feels that intrinsic ache for home in the pit of his stomach. Shirasagi is miles away from this small town in the middle of Nohr, but he feels its presence in the back of his head, urging him home. What he wouldn’t do to heed that call, to march home on calloused, aching feet, to be rid of this war and to return to his family: three sets of soft smiles and familiar eyes, and maybe even one more, bright crimson as the spider lilies in Mikoto’s garden, unfamiliar but with the promise of a future that is anything but. The grey haired boy has so many reasons to hate the girl with winter-white hair and crimson eyes, but he could never loathe her more than he does for walking away with their future - Sakura’s, Hinoka’s, Ryoma’s, and his own - and giving it all to Nohr. 

Leaning his tired back against the tree, Takumi opens his eyes. There is no crimson for him to see in this forest, only the ghost of green under silver moonlight, and the errant patch of snow, as blindingly white as her hair on the battlefield, unmistakable and twirling around her like a maelstrom amidst an ocean of ebony-clothed Nohrians and strikingly scarlet blood. The few days she had spent in Hoshido seem surreal now, and Takumi thinks back to them sadly, bitterly. She was brilliant even then, a warm smile despite the unfamiliarity of the country that surrounded her, ensconced her, and in the unfalteringly eager curiosity he saw in her gaze, he found hope - not just for her future, but for his.

Kamui was an important stranger, a sister in nothing but name, and the promise of a new beginning. Everything was new to her, he had seen it in the way her eyes alit with everything she saw, and the hope of being able to talk to someone who didn’t know him, who didn’t hold him to the stiflingly high expectations he had built around himself, was something the boy had never allowed himself to have until he met her. Takumi loved her - the idea of her, the possibility of her - before he even knew her, and the thought is less startling as it is immutable; had she stayed, he would have loved her, and had she gone, he still would - still  _ does  _ \- love her, and the thought makes his heart  _ ache _ .

With a heavy sigh, Takumi slides down to the ground, leans against the tree and presses his palms against the cold dirt. The forest is covered in errant patches of snow, colder than he is used to, but he lets the chill nip at bared hands freely, numbing the dull sting of cuts and blisters across his skin. He reaches up gingerly, brushes fingertips against the bandages that encircle his bicep, hiding the place where icy metal had left a long cut along the flesh of his bow arm, weakening his grip and sending his arrow flying meters away from its mark. Kamui had stared him in the eye as she attacked him, his own scarlet blood dripping from the glinting edge of Yato, and not a sound escaped her mouth, but he could read the  _ Please, forgive me _ on her lips as if she had yelled it. 

Even now, her voice is as clear as it had been the day they were reunited, and he knows the timbre of it so naturally, so effortlessly. Sliding his eyes shut again, it’s almost too easy to imagine a different scenario, one where her blade stands beside him rather than directed at him, and all the hope that Takumi never allowed himself before her crashes down on him in the form of one person, of tragic eyes and unspoken apologies, and tawny eyes fly open, the flat of his fist slamming against the tree trunk behind him. His aching limbs cry out in pain at the sudden movement, but the shakiness of his breath and the burning behind his eyes are all that he can feel, swirling dizzily and painfully in the front of his head, and Takumi lifts himself up on unsteady legs, forces back sobs from between chattering teeth. 

He knows full well that he should head back to camp, return to his soldiers before they notice he is gone, but the grey haired boy doesn’t want to be seen, not as he is now, so far from the poised Prince of Hoshido that he is supposed to be, has painstakingly built himself up to be, and he leans on the rough bark of the pine tree as if it is the only thing keeping him up; his exhausted legs ache beneath him, and he thinks that the tree just might be. 

Just as he hopes that none of his men will go out looking for him, Takumi hears a branch snap underfoot just feet away from him; terror is the first thing that grips him, banishing the threat of tears from his eyes and jolting his pulse into a rapid sprint. His first instinct is to run, but with the state of his body now, he knows that running will bring him nothing except a quick fall to the earth, his balance lost immediately to exhaustion underfoot. It must be a wild animal or one of his soldiers, Takumi reasons; the Nohrians have no reason to wander this far from Cheve when their own camp is doubtlessly alight with celebrations of victory, warm and alive and every opposite of the small camp that his own men were forced to take brief shelter in. The thought is infuriating as it is relieving - he has no energy or desire to fight as he is now - and with a shaky voice and a shakier pulse, the prince speaks.

“Who goes there?” he calls out into the shadows, into the dark patches that snow and moonlight don’t reach. There’s another crunch of snow underfoot, dead leaves rustling along the ground, and the last voice he expected to hear - so painfully familiar, even now - answers back.

“Takumi?” Kamui asks incredulously. She steps out of the brush and into the clearing, moonlight catching immediately on her winter-white hair and painting it in dizzying shades of silver. Her sudden presence does little for his racing heart; in fact, he feels his pulse quicken, his fingernails digging harshly into the flesh of his palms, and his face must be masked with a badly concealed terror if the fall of her own features is any indication. He clenches his jaw tightly, teeth pressed so harshly against each other that he fears they might shatter, and glares.

“Get out,” he warns her lowly. “The face of a  _ traitor  _ is the last one I want to see right now.”

Kamui winces, averts her crimson eyes.

“Takumi, please,” she urges softly. “I don’t want to fight you right now. Not here. Not like this.”

“Hah! And yet you cut me down so easily on the battlefield earlier, didn’t you?” he responds humorlessly. “Should we go back to Cheve just so you can finish the job?”

“ _ No _ ,” she gasps suddenly. Her eyes fly back up to his, and he sees a startlingly familiar terror in them; it matches his own, the heart-freezing sensation he feels when her eyes lock onto his no matter where they are - in the middle of a battlefield or in the middle of a forest, with moonlight and silence as their only other companions. Kamui steps closer, and he cannot tell if it is a lack of energy or an abundance of curiosity that keeps him rooted in place, unable to walk away from her. Takumi stays perfectly still and stares at her as she approaches him, fingers curled uncertainly at her sides and eyes shining with a tremulous hesitance, a trembling fear. She’s scared of him, battered and wrapped in bandages as he is, and the realization is reassuring as much as it is crushing. 

“I never wanted to hurt you, Takumi,” she tells him quietly. Her eyes are downcast, fixed on the alabaster cloth that encircles his arm, and he knows her words before she even speaks them. “Tell me it’ll heal, that even the scar will fade and that you’ll be okay.” 

“Some scars don’t fade,” he tells her instead, tawny eyes on her fingers as she reaches out, brushes her fingertips lightly against the cloth. He flinches only slightly, enough to make her pause, but not enough to make her pull away. Takumi can’t feel the heat of her fingers through the thickly layered fabric, but he can tell they are warm when the air around them is frigid, the epitome of a winter in Nohr, and the boy can’t help but wonder just how warm her palms would feel pressed against his own. His are still slightly numb from laying them against the icy ground, and he curls his fingers into them absently. She tilts her head up to meet his gaze sadly.

“Forgive me,” Kamui sighs into the space between them, the tail ends of her warm breath barely there against his cold cheeks. “If I could have done it any other way, know that I would have.”

Takumi clucks his tongue softly, pulls his arm out of her reach. “You haven’t changed a bit,” he mutters, half of it tainted with the lilt of a breathy, bitter laugh. He turns away from her. “You don’t ask for forgiveness in war, Kamui.”

“But I’m asking it anyway!” she shouts, reaches forward and grabs his wrist, tugging him to face her. He lets her, lets the searing warmth of her skin against his brand the outline of her fingers into his flesh, and when he stares into her crimson eyes, there is an urgency so different from that of battle - rawer, more desperate, and stained with the glassy threat of pleading tears. Takumi grits his teeth, tries and fails to will away the sudden ache that fills the cavity of his chest. “Please, lay down your arms, Takumi,” she asks brokenly. “Don’t make me fight you any more than I already have.”

Tawny eyes slide shut and he sighs, slowly and heavily; it does little to alleviate the pain in his chest. “We both know that isn’t happening,” he tells her levelly. “You chose that fate the moment you turned your back on Hoshido.”

Her fingers tighten around his wrist, the beginnings of tremors present in the tightness of her grip, and when Takumi opens his eyes, hers are screwed shut.

“I don’t want anymore pain, Takumi. Anymore suffering,  _ death _ .” Kamui releases a slow, unsteady breath and opens her eyes, lets go of his wrist. The previous urgency in her gaze is gone, replaced with a heavy sadness, so striking that he can feel it in his own chest, too, filling up his lungs with a forlorn sigh that might never gain enough momentum to float up past his throat and tumble past tired lips. “I… I love you -  all of you - even now,” she confesses, taking his both hands gently in either of hers, “and crossing blades with you breaks my heart.”

The boy averts his eyes. “And how do you think we feel?” he whispers. “How do you think  _ I _ feel having to fight against you who I could have called Sister?”

“Takumi,” she begins softly.

“I could have loved you,” he tells her harshly, turns hurt tawny eyes back to her. She does not flinch at his words, but he feels her fingers twitch around his wrists. “ _ I did _ ,” he adds, the whispered echo of an afterthought, but Kamui hears it anyway, shifts her fingers around his own and tugs him forward. Takumi isn’t sure what he had expected, but she winds her arms around the back of his neck tightly, burying her face in his chest, and the smell of pine fades away in the presence of the scent of ancient magic that surrounds her like fog. It’s dizzying, coupled with the heat that emanates from her body pressed against his, and - for a moment - it’s easy to forget that war that rages on between them, around them, and he almost has a mind to wrap his arms around her, too.

“I still do,” she mutters, words vibrating dully against his chest. Kamui pulls away slowly, drags her fingertips along his shoulders and back down to his hands, and meets his eyes levelly. “I never stopped.”

Takumi draws his gaze away again, staring instead at his hands in her own. His are still littered with fresh scars, physical proof of the war that rages perpetually around them, and hers are painted with old ones, faded white lines across the porcelain surface of her skin.

“Love isn’t something you can give so freely in war,” he tells her, repeats his previous tune in different words, only to feel the melody fall flat on his tongue. Even he doesn’t not believe himself.

“Why can’t I?” she insists, runs her fingertips over the ridges of his knuckles. “And don’t tell me it’s because we’re at war, Takumi. I know.”

He sighs, clucks his tongue softly and lifts his eyes back to hers.

"It is, though. One day, Kamui, you will die," he tells her quietly, "and it will be by my hands."

She does not seem surprised by his words, only sighing softly as she continues to run the pads of her thumbs along the healing cuts on his hands. Her fingers are calloused, so much more than Takumi ever could have imagined, but they are warm against the winter air that surrounds them. He tears his gaze away from hers and stares at their connected hands, wondering if the porcelain pale of her skin would darken to match his own golden olive had she grown up with them, with Hoshidan sunlight surrounding them and staining her skin more golden with every passing summer.

"Then why not tonight?" she asks sadly, stilling her hands around his own. Takumi frowns, tightens his fingers around hers until his knuckles turn white, until they just barely match the pale shade of her own skin.

"Because tonight," he whispers lowly, shakily, "Tonight I still love you, and it's only for that, that I won't let any more Hoshidan blood be spilled."

She pauses.

"Am I truly still Hoshidan in your eyes, Takumi?"

He loosens his shaking fingers around hers, intertwining them carefully instead. The differences in their skin tones are as apparent as ever this way, even in the weak silver light of the moon, and he slides his tawny eyes up to hers rather than stare at their intertwined fingers any longer.

"You never won't be, Kamui," he tells her. “You may fight with Nohr and cross blades with all four of us, but there is Hoshido in your blood more than anything else.” Takumi pauses, gaze flittering to their intertwined fingers as he squeezes her hands gently. His willowy fingers fit seamlessly between the bony valleys of her knuckles, and his golden skin is the shadows between pale porcelain mountains, side by side but irrefutably striking in contrast. “And if that makes a sister out of a once traitor,” he continues quietly, tawny eyes sliding up to hers, “then so be it.”

Her mouth falls open, the promise of a response on her delicate lips, but not a sound ebbs past her heavy tongue; the promise of soft words returned is broken as easily as the small contact between their hands as she tugs hers away, untangles her fingers from his and leaves only icy air against the fragile skin of his palms. He almost follows her, chases the fading warmth of her flesh in the middle of an unforgiving Nohr winter, but she wraps her hands around herself, turns bodily away from him and tears any lingering chances he may have away. 

Kamui sighs tiredly, tilts her eyes up toward the starry sky overhead. Takumi absently wonders if the stars here are the same as the ones above her castle, the eerie stone prison that Nohr calls its heart. Part of him wants nothing to do with the same stars that blanket the Nohrian capital, but with crimson eyes tilted so wistfully up toward them, he knows the realization that they share the same sky will drown out any disdain that threatens to poison his star-stained thoughts. He could be in Shirasagi, counting the faint stars that glint past a low hanging fog, and crimson eyes might be doing the same, tracing lazy shapes between twinkling lights in the sky, her warm breath traced by lazy curls of heat in the middle of icy Nohrian air.

“Hope for a sister isn’t something you give to a traitor in war,” she speaks suddenly. “You have so much faith in you, Takumi. Giving so much of it to me is a waste.”

“Then it’s a waste I intend to make without regret,” he responds resolutely.

She turns back toward him this time, locks sorrowful crimson eyes onto his own. 

“I’m sorry,” Kamui says, more weary exhalation than spoken word, and Takumi has to strain his ears to hear. When he catches her words, he feels his lips curl down into a frown. She glances at him one last time - doleful crimson eyes filled with the promise of a thousand more unvoiced apologies - before she turns away, winter-white hair turning to silver in the moonlight and dead leaves crunching dully underfoot as she walks away. Tawny eyes follow the gleam of her hair until it is swallowed by shadows and brush.

“Me too,” Takumi sighs to no one, and he looks once more at the healing scars she had traced with her calloused thumbs against his palms before turning on his heel and walking wordlessly back to camp.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and feedback are always welcome!
> 
> I also have a second piece in the works for the aftermath of the Izumo chapter, so look out for that! I make no promises for how long it'll take though, ahaha........


End file.
